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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24518047">a monster among us</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfTheQuill/pseuds/QueenOfTheQuill'>QueenOfTheQuill</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>UnDeadwood (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(look I made this up so there's no actual name for it), Gen, Suicidal Ideation, Supernatural Creatures, church grim!Matthew, don't keep reading the tags if you don't want to be spoiled for what everyone is, faeblood!Miriam, fog revenant!Aloysius, mind the tags lovelies, no graphic depictions of violence but like it does happen, phoenix!Clayton, some non linear storytelling, werewolf!Arabella, witch!Arabella</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:07:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,780</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24518047</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfTheQuill/pseuds/QueenOfTheQuill</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What if UnDeadwood was almost the same, but a little weirder? Semi-based off of the fan theories flying around before everyone turned out to be human. Sometimes, the Weird West is even stranger than you could imagine.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. I. from the ashes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>We'll be going through each of the characters, so buckle up.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The first time Clayton Sharpe wakes up in a bed of ash, his name is Samuel Thompson and his past has caught up with him. (This is the first time, but it will not be the last.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Someone who knew Joseph Harvey, maybe a cousin or a friend, sees him in town and calls him Amos. He’s only made it as far as El Paso before he finds himself duelling in the street while someone fetches the lawman from Heaven only knows where.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Joseph Harvey’s maybe cousin or maybe friend guns him down in the street and he bleeds out in the Texas sun long before the Sheriff ever makes it to the scene.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, he wakes up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The first time is a blessing and they haven’t had time to put him under the ground. (He will not always be so lucky.) So Samuel Thompson gasps awake in a pile of scorched corpses waiting for the gravedigger and all he can wonder as he staggers away is </span>
  <em>
    <span>why?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Why is he covered in ash? Why is the smokey-rich scent comforting to him? Why does the space where the bullet tore through his lung ache, even though he’s naked as the day he was born and can see no mark on his chest?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Why him?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He never gets answers, but he dies again as William Thorton and Simon Bailey and Charles Wheatley and Thomas Atkins. Simon dies stupid, from a rattler bite in the scrub of New Mexico, days from the nearest town or permanent camp because just the thought of being inside a building makes the place between his shoulder blades itch. When he wakes up, already starting to burn and peel from the sun, he can see for the first time the enormous, ashy imprint of wings in the sand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>William and Thomas awaken underground in coffins already crumbling to join the ash around him. He crawls his way out of the dirt and is born anew, but his face never changes, and his crimes never stop chasing him. When he’s Thomas, he’s tired—</span>
  <em>
    <span>so tired</span>
  </em>
  <span>—of running and he lets them catch him and hang him just for the rest he knows lies in the darkness at the end of the rope.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Thomas wakes up and claws his way out of the dirt near Wichita, he decides that he will be Clayton and he will avoid towns more than he enters them. He grows a beard and mustache to hide the shape of his face and drifts in and out of towns, heading even further north. The town of Deadwood catches his ear and he decides that that kind of lawless chaos is exactly the kind of place that won’t ask too many questions, won’t look too closely and wonder how a roughshod man like him doesn’t have any scars. When he gets into his first duel as Clayton and a bullet tears through his shoulder, it’s almost a relief. When too many eyes look too closely, he starts to wonder when he will next wake up in a pile of ashes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He starts to wonder if maybe, this is the time that whatever has been waking him back up from the darkness will decide he’s out of second chances.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So Clayton circles Deadwood, coming in every so often to see what sort of job Al Swearengen has on offer. Sometimes, he declines. Most of the time, he doesn’t and he walks away with pockets and soul just a little heavier.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, Swearengen pulls him into a group, wanting some unaffiliated hire-ons to check out a problem with some mines and Clayton feels like a bird with its feathers on backwards. The thought of being around strangers for so long in close quarters… it doesn’t feel right. Something about their group feels like danger. Mrs. Landisman has a warmth about her that he instinctively wants to lean towards, but he’s seen how it can freeze in an instant. When Mrs. Whitlock has to mount up behind him, he can feel himself instinctively want to loom larger and has to fight himself to keep a normal seat on his horse. He can’t help but be relieved when she chooses to mount up behind Mr. Fogg for the ride home so he can focus on trying to shake the horror of creatures even more unnatural than himself writhing from the pit.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, the unnatural keeps occurring. Dead men aren’t meant to walk above ground </span>
  <em>
    <span>(then what does that make you?)</span>
  </em>
  <span> and Clayton feels an almost frantic need to put them back where they belong. Not quite frantic enough to use the fizzing power trickling through his veins, at least not until they’re up against something far worse.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He questions the others about it, about their power, and when Aly mentions survival, he thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Birds of a feather</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and nods.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the aftermath of the wild fight against whatever remained of Doc Cochran, Clayton surveys their group with a feeling of belonging that he hasn’t felt since long before the first time he woke up in ashes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At the Gem, he toasts with his whiskey shot to the people who have stood by him in fights against things most people don’t even want to think about. “To another day of livin’.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s what fills his smile with bitter irony when cold iron presses against the back of his head and it’s a friend’s hand and a friend’s voice behind the weapon. Clayton watches Miriam and Arabella’s eyes fill with tears and wishes he could reassure them. Wishes that it wouldn’t be up to the Reverend to bury him and hopes that shallow graves are still the fashion in Deadwood. Hopes that Aloysius has the decency to leave him his personal affects so he can grab them on the way out of town.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Clayton will get up (he hopes) at the end of this, so when he lands one shot in Aloysius’ chest, it feels the worst kind of wrong. He can’t bear to shoot Aloysius dead when he knows it’ll stick, so he just tries to get the gun out of the other man’s hand. In the end, like so many times before, he is left staring at the sky as it fades darker than the middle of the night can account for.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>For a monster like him? They’ll be done mourning him before he’s even out of town.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. II. every bit as feral</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Arabella Livingston is born, they say she is a blessing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Looking back years later, she wouldn’t say she agrees.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At seven years her sister’s junior, their parents thought they were through having children when Mrs. Livingston fell pregnant. Arabella Livingston is born on April 30th, 1855 and only her mother’s German maid remembers that other parts of the world call that </span>
  <em>
    <span>Witch’s Night</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Marta returns to her home in Pennsylvania in the fall of 1865 to take care of her ailing parents. Maybe if she hadn’t, things would be different. Winter without her is quiet, but Cynthia takes up her care and pulls her little sister in romps through the deserted rooms of the family’s looming home, avoiding the news of a smallpox epidemic outside their walls. They play monsters and princesses and Arabella shrieks with delight whenever Cynthia catches her up in her arms. Winter fades into spring almost without notice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The day before Arabella’s eleventh birthday, Cynthia is caught up in their mother’s planning for her upcoming debut in the spring. Cynthia is </span>
  <em>
    <span>old</span>
  </em>
  <span> for a debut, and when Arabella tells her so, Cynthia shoos her into their room, yelling about the wild Union Army boys wrecking the town.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>By the time the whirlwind of skirts and fabric and hats and gloves has died down, Arabella has finished pouting about missing out on the fun and begs Cynthia to take her for a turn in their garden after the sun sets. The moon is full overhead and Arabella has always loved marvelling at the sky. She is quick to run ahead, studying how the moonlight changes the colors of the flowers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Arabella never has the chance to scream, but her sister’s shrill of fear will echo in her ears for years, even while the rest of the event is nothing but a blur and a sharp pain in her left shoulder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The next day, Cynthia tells her that it was just a big dog, maybe escaped from some brutish owner. After the next full moon, Cynthia tells her the truth when she wakes up locked in the wardrobe, surrounded by shredded clothes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ve never seen a wolf, not in person, but no picture I’ve ever seen looked like that- that thing that jumped out of the bushes,” Cynthia tells her, face as white as her debut gown. Her hands are folded neatly in her lap like a proper lady, but Arabella can see them shaking. “It wasn’t rightly a man or a beast, but it looked like something of both.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Am I- Cynthia, am I a monster now?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Cynthia takes her hands in a moment. “No, sugar. You’re not a monster. We’ll figure this out together.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Cynthia loudly says it’s time to replace her childish clothing and takes her on trips about town, buying her all the proper things for a young lady to have. Petticoats. A parasol. Delicate white gloves. Books of the occult, which they pore through by candlelight when Cynthia can sneak from her proper adult bedroom into the childhood nursery they once shared. On the full moons, they carefully fold Arabella’s clothing and stack it on the bed before Cynthia locks her in the wardrobe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In the daytime, Cynthia teaches her everything about holding herself as perfectly as possible. “Mama and Papa can’t know. No one can,” she whispers urgently as she straightens Arabella’s spine once more, books balancing primly on her head. “If animals go missing or someone starts reporting a beast stalking the neighborhood, no one’s gonna suspect the perfect young lady from down the lane. Do it again.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Arabella wakes in the back garden to a face and front covered in blood, Cynthia just bundles her into the house and gets a sturdy chair to prop in front of the wardrobe. Arabella closes her ears to the rumors of a man from down the street going missing and sits straighter and smiles more politely than ever.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At night, they read old tomes full of strange symbols and stanger recipes. They don’t find a cure, but just after Arabella’s fourteenth birthday, they find a charm to help control the beast while it’s out. It takes until nearly her fifteenth birthday before they get it right, and the wardrobe accumulates more and more scratches on the inside. The morning after Arabella keeps her mind the whole night through, Cynthia helps her saw partway through a leg on the wardrobe and sends it crashing to the ground and shattering.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The leg must’ve worn through,” says their father. “We’ll order you a new one.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even with the beast’s mind and urges under control, she dives deeper and deeper into the occult, broadening her interests to every unknown science under the sun. When Cynthia is sent off to the Dakota Territory to be married, Arabella, all of 21, sinks even deeper into her research. She finds a potion she can take to induce the beast and carefully tucks the recipe away to memorize. When she reads the telegram that Cynthia is gone, only a few months later, Arabella contemplates taking off her talisman for the first time in years and losing herself to the wolf for a few hours.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her parents won’t quite meet her eyes when they propose marrying her off to her sister’s widower to ensure their trade deal is kept solid. Arabella’s eyes are dry, but her tear catcher is full as she lines the bottom of her trunks with leather bound books that still carry the feel of Cynthia in their pages and piles her clothes atop them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Deadwood is about what she expected, dusty and unrefined. Arabella only feels at home three days a month, when the night is as bright as it gets. At first, she worries about sneaking away from her husband, but he doesn’t even want her to perform her wifely duties, let alone caring where she sleeps at night. If he’s even still sober enough to notice when she goes to bed, she begs stomach troubles as an excuse for sleeping on the couch and slips out the back door to run in the wild hills until dawn. When a hooplehead catches her slinking on all fours back past the outskirts of town and draws breath to holler, she’s on him before the sound ever leaves him. As she slides into bed beside her husband with the dawn, her hands don’t shake and her eyes are dry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She vomits an hour later and smiles weakly to her husband about a weak stomach and the flu.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s less than a month later that Arabella goes to hear the new Reverend, one she’s run into a few times in her quest to avoid her new home, make a speech in front of the half-burned church.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I kind of like the church burnt,” she says to him and she’s thinking of a thing that many would consider beautiful wrecked by violence and monstrosity when she says it, but she can tell he doesn’t take it that way. Still, as she heads to the Gem, she can pick out others in the crowd drifting the same way in a carefully casual manner and she smiles.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That smile turns tight when Mr. Swearengen names everyone in the room as a killer and she wonders: did he see, last month? Did one of his men? How many people know what she is?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Riding into the wilderness with strangers, Arabella sits carefully sidesaddle and doesn’t think about how her own four feet are faster. As Mr. Sharpe bristles in front of her and she can see the hairs on the back of his neck raise, she takes pain to make herself seem even more harmless, almost uselessly prim.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It works until she sees the monsters emerging from the pit and her hackles go up. She can’t stop herself from baring her teeth, glad that the handkerchief she’d tied around her nose and mouth hid the feral expression. She thinks she manages to repress the growl rumbling in her chest, though the Reverend cocks his head at her as he struggles to his feet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, they are fighting and they are winning and they are falling to the ground and into blackness.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Arabella has never been gladder to wake up and see something other than the full moon in the sky. As her companions blink awake, she is already on her feet, frantically burning sage and sketching the all-seeing eye into the dirt in front of her. It nearly makes her laugh when Mrs. Landisman asks what she’s doing with suspicion in her voice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This isn’t the part of me you need to be worried about</span>
  </em>
  <span>, she doesn’t say.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pretends not to notice Mr. Sharpe’s sigh of relief when she chooses Mr. Fogg’s horse for the trip back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then, there are dead men walking the streets and power, real power trickling through her veins, and she hasn’t felt this alive since the last full moon. A part of her wants to leap into the fray, to rip and tear, but she contents herself with smiling viciously when her bullets tear into the dead men like claws and teeth from afar.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When it’s all over, Arabella is nearly shaking with excitement, knowing that something around Deadwood can raise the dead. She lets the others think it’s fear, lets Mr. Sharpe walk her home in silence as her head reels with possibility, lets Mr. Whitlock sleep off his booze as she turns it all over in her mind.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Then it’s the next day and everything is happening all at once. She sees her sister’s grave lying empty, she cuts open a dead man to find ash in his belly, and watches Cynthia rise again with nothing but hate in her eyes. Their nights and nights of research tumble over in her mind as Arabella squeezes the trigger and her sister falls to the dust.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything is a blur as they move through town gathering supplies for a trip back to that cursed pit that started it all. As she watches Mr. Sharpe pour lantern oil into Cynthia’s once again grave, she feels almost the sensation of a hand at her back, straightening her spine and she all but rips the tear catcher off her neck. “No more tears,” is what Arabella says out loud, but in her head, she adds, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Over you or me. There isn’t a cure, Cynthia, and I won’t waste my life looking for one.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Arabella turns towards her future.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Interestingly, Arabella's is the only character's chapter that doesn't go to the end of the last episode. She let me know that she was quite done at this point, thank you.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. III. mist of memories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Early mornings feel like home to Aloysius. This mist curls around his legs when he moves, eddies and swirls with the wind, but it’s familiar enough to feel comforting before it burns off in the heat of the growing day. As far as he travels, he makes sure to take his morning coffee on the porch of whatever establishment he resides in as the sun dawns.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Deadwood is no different, at least at first. But it is the first time since Then that he encounters the fog that made him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The dogs are baying in the darkness. The other men are breaking left, but Aloysius doesn’t see them and veers right. Later, he’ll wonder whether this was a blessing or a curse.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The crashing of men sounds like it’s right at his heels and Aloysius starts to pray.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he first meets the other four, some in the bar of the Gem, some in Swearengen’s office upstairs, something inside him curls and eddies like natural fog and he knows to pay attention. These people: something about them </span>
  <em>
    <span>clicks</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Something about them is familiar.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Breath sounds loud in the darkness and Aly can’t tell if it’s the sound of his heart pounding in his ears or if it’s drums sealing his doom. He tries to sink into the darkness and the rising fog and all he can think is, “Please, anything.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He can’t help but tweak the preacher’s nose, and keeps waiting for him to shake like a dog before slinking off, but it seems Miss Miriam has him well in hand. Still, Aly isn’t one to deny himself fun, so he heads upstairs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he descends, the other four are gone, as they warned him they would be, so he sets out for the horses and hitches them outside the saloon to wait. Even though there’s no morning mist to watch, he settles into his usual, comfortable position on the porch, feeling like he could spread right out of his skin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Something in the back of his mind echoes «anything...» and suddenly, Aloysius feels like he’s everywhere, stretching across this whole clearing all at once. He’s high and low and sideways in the middle, and then he is back in himself, holding his breath as a man with a dog walks inches from his face. The dog actually walks </span>
  </em>
  <span>through</span>
  <em>
    <span> his legs and he has to hold back a yelp of surprise.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After the incident in the canyon, Aloysius really can’t be surprised when things at the mine go to absolute shit. Snakes coming up out of the pit, only they don’t look like any natural snakes he’s seen. Despite himself, he starts looking for fog.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t see it until later that night, when dead men are up and walkin’ around like town’s theirs to own. Before his eyes can light up in recognition, Arabella is lighting up the street like daytime and the fog stays back. Aly can’t fade from the bright light himself, so he tries to recapture the up-down-sideways-everywhere feeling of mist by channeling the new lightning in his veins. It’s not the same, but he feels lit up like a thunderstorm inside and he thinks maybe that’s better. Even if he can’t trust the lighting, he can trust the clouds.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They’re gone, maybe five, ten minutes when a sudden wind feels like it’s going to push him apart and he gasps. Aly slams fully back into presence, realizes that his feet haven’t been pushing down the grass since the everywhere-at-once feeling. Realizes he hasn’t been breathing. Cautiously he holds his breath again and watches as the grass immediately starts to spring up like he’s taken a step away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He lets out a sigh and breathes, “Thank you,” into the wind. Then he takes off, away from the dogs and away from this place.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The next morning, Aly is up like clockwork, taking his coffee on the porch of the Bella Union as the sun rises, despite the late night and fitful sleep. As the good Reverend apparently needs to be levered out of bed with a crowbar and the blackest black tar coffee anyone can find, he volunteers to pick up Mrs. Whitlock from her home.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she drops all decorum to accept his offered ride with a couple of choice words, Aly throws back his head and laughs and feels like the sun sparkling on frosted grass.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Aly takes it in stride when, by morning’s light, it seems his magic trick has faded as he holds his breath and watches the grass remain crushed flat under heel. He feels tugged in the direction of a town. When he sees the wanted poster tacked up on the board and remembers passing that exact face on the road out of town, he knows why.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Survival: it’s something that Aly knows vibrates deep in his bones. And if the way he makes his living lawfully hunting down white folk for a reward twists up a pleased sort of irony in his gut, well. He doesn’t deny himself life’s little pleasures.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Of course, their day heartily goes to shit after that. Their job ain’t done, not by a long shot, and they’re running like wild geese all over the town, looking for clues that refuse to surface in a normal pattern.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The only bright spot for him is spotting his old friend in the graveyard. While the others are preoccupied, Aloysius gets down on one knee to examine the fog. When he passes his hand through it and it takes as much notice as a dead horse does water, he smiles to himself.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There you are.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When one of his bounties takes to shooting back at him in the dead of night while Aly’s trying to wrangle him, he holds his breath almost out of instinct. The bullet passes through as though he’s no more than smoke and he takes advantage of the man’s surprise to hogtie him and throw him over the back of the horse.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After picking up his reward, Aly finds himself rubbing a hand absently over the place the bullet should have lodged in his left hip. It seemed his namesake was still with him after all.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The fog doesn’t seem to like Reverend Mason. Perhaps it’s why he likes pulling the other man’s tail so much. Still, it gave them good enough clues to point them to a pair of empty graves. Aly finds himself in the unique position of wishing he had come face to face with a dead body instead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He gets his wish, in more ways than one, while helping carry EB Farnum to Doc’s (and wasn’t the Reverend’s little run-in mighty interesting?) and when he helps shoot down Wild Bill Hickok and Arabella’s unfortunate sister.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He tracks bounties across the states, but tends to stay north. Between the spittle aimed towards him and the niggling unease that always swirls eddies within him south of the Mason-Dixon, Aloysius looks to stay as far as he can on the Union side of things.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>So when a bounty comes up that points him into the Dakota Territory, he leaps to track down a killer and see justice served. He hasn’t heard much about this Kinsley fellow so far, but he sounds like a real piece of work. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Aly grabs the next stagecoach bound for Deadwood.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As is rapidly becoming typical with their little group, everything snowballs into a massive pile of shit almost faster than he can blink. Aly has seen enough weird shit in his day, as though turning to mist himself isn’t crazy enough, but Doc Cochran turning into a giant fucking three-headed snake monster takes the weird fucking cake.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But Miriam had given him nitro for a reason, so Aloysius lines up the two cleanest shots he can and burns that motherfucker to the ground. The heat of the explosions makes him recoil and he feels like he’s burning off in the sun until he remembers to breathe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When it’s all over, and as many of the snake-things are dead as they can manage, he watches as Mason’s wounds close up with a prayer and a laying of hands and he thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>That doesn’t look so bad, now that I think of it</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he plays a game.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s as though a glass cylinder is suddenly erected within him, trapping the swirling mass that he hadn’t even noticed had become part of him on the inside. Aly realizes that he’s feeling more clear headed than he has in years, ever since the night with the fog. How had he ever let his vision be obscured like that?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Swearengen hands him the wanted poster for his bounty and it has Clayton Sharpe’s face on it, it feels like the fog-behind-glass turns into a tornado. But he has a job to do, so he raises his gun and it gives him no pleasure. At the finality of a last shot through the heart, the fog within him seems to give up, slumping into almost nothingness. Holstering his gun, he heads to his room</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In six days, Aloysius Fogg will wake up screaming, the fog inside him rushing out of its glass prison, bringing with it his emotions, and he will weep for what he’s done.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But now, he heads to the deep sleep of the righteous and doesn’t yet know that his old friend can’t protect him from himself.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. IV. remnants of faith</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Before Matthew Mason has a name, he dies on four legs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The men are quick and his bones are laid to rest in the north-most corner of the cemetery. For years and years and years, time he is unable to count, he watches people wander in and out of the churchyard, hurrying past when they look his way and See. When men come in the night to make off with the church’s sparse silver and gold, they are met with sharp white teeth that flash in the darkness. There are two more funerals the next day.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The men in black cloth come and go, age and die and are buried. Only one ever pays him any real mind. The Man calls him Mason and lays an absent hand on his side when Mason curls up beside him as he reads from the Book.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But it’s been too long since the first deaths. More men come, looking for the take from the weekly collection. Mason is there, but so is the Man and there are too many for Mason to defeat all at once. When red stains the floor, it is more than just that of the men who came to take.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mason paws at the Man as his breath rattles in his chest and he whines and he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants</span>
  </em>
  <span> and then he is shifting and stretching and growing and </span>
  <em>
    <span>changing</span>
  </em>
  <span> and his paws look like hands and his body is big and strong enough to carry the Man to his bed. He tears the black cloth with his too-blunt teeth and clumsily wraps the wounds to keep the red inside where it belongs. Then he sits on the floor and he </span>
  <em>
    <span>waits</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When the sun comes up, the Man’s eyelashes flutter open and they take in the space where Mason is trying to curl in the way he’s used to. His limbs are getting in the way and when the Man looks at him, he whines a question.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Man blinks for a moment, then sits up with a groan as Mason rushes to help. “Alright then. I can work with this.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mason learns about clothes and names and speaking and reading and the Good Book from the Man, whose name he now knows is Peter. When Mason walks on two legs, Peter calls him Matthew. When he walks on four, he is still Mason.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Still, time must wear on, and Peter must go into the ground with the rest of the bones. The Church lies empty and the town is almost as bare, from what little Mason can see from his place in the graveyard. He watches as the last people trickle away and the buildings start to crumble. When the church is struck by lightning and burns, there is no one to rebuild it and Mason feels his tether to this place thin until it is nearly snapped. With no church to protect, no more dead to go into the ground, the only thing holding him here are his bones, so he gathers a worn sack from the graveyard shed and unearths his last tie to this place. On his last night, he sleeps curled on top of Peter’s grave.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mason wanders, sometimes on four feet, sometimes on two. Someone asks his name, and he blurts Peter. It settles well over his shoulders. He finds a particular liking for horses, who always shy from him when they know his teeth are sharp enough to rip, but respond well to his gentle hands. When someone on the road thinks he and the family he’s decided to travel with for a time are easy pickings, he turns to teeth and shadow and </span>
  <em>
    <span>protects</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The others run screaming, even when he flops to the ground in submission, so he learns to kill with his hands and a weapon.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Some soldiers take notice and before he can quite track what’s happening, he’s joined a cavalry unit and is learning even more about the way men kill each other. Still, the feeling of protecting his fellow soldiers settles something in his chest that has been sitting wrong ever since he left his churchyard.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That place in his chest flares with white hot heat when he catches a man reading aloud from a book that smells of death even to his human nose. Mason kills the man, but it’s too late and forces that feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong wrong wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span> come crawling out of the earth to kill and maim. In the face of things more unearthly than himself, the heat dies out and he flees.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He knows that the men have Rules, and that he will be killed (can he die again?) if they find him, so he trades his journey on horseback for one on four feet and heads north. As he slinks through the streets of Rapid City, he hears a preacher calling about rebirth and renewal and something about it is familiar in a way that aches. On two feet, he responds.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Bible is a comfort and the preacher calls him Matthew in a voice that sounds almost like Peter’s. When he asks if Matthew is ready for a parish of his own, the space in his soul perks up its ears. When he sees the church (burned, and isn’t that familiar), that space whispers </span>
  <em>
    <span>mine</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He will not run again and his bones find a space to rest in a chest that he keeps beneath his bed. He can feel something else protecting the graveyard and he wonders, if he digs, will he find a skull like his?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Later, he sits in an office with four strangers and Al Swearangen names him a killer and it settles in his chest the same way protecting soldiers did. He was made to protect, and if he must kill to do so, he will. These are </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span> people in this town, his flock, and he will rip the threat from the very air if he must.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Matthew doesn’t forget the panic of people who find what they don’t expect lurking inside him, so he bumbles the shotgun and plays the innocent Reverend. When a snake emerges from the pit with the same sense of </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong</span>
  </em>
  <span> as that dark night, his panic is real. Still, he fights to protect himself and the people who all feel familiar in one way or another.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When they all fall and he dreams, the church in his mind and the man in front of it flicker, sometimes his original home with Peter in front, sometimes his haven in Rapid City, sometimes his own church and face looking back at him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The dead walk the streets and everything in his soul cries out for him to return them to the ground. His hackles raise and a growl rumbles in his chest that echoes the one he could have sworn he’d heard coming from Mrs. Whitlock earlier. If he was alone, he’d tear into them with tooth and claw, but he contents himself with bullets and prayers.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As the next day spirals out of control, Matthew can’t help but wish that his new home was as easy to defend as his old one. When the two men confront him on his way with Arabella and Aly to the Doc’s office, he is tired of playing the complicated games of men. His next smile flashes teeth that are too large and too sharp and he is grimly satisfied in the way the men scramble away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There is no time for rest, not when there are more monstrosities to put down. This time, he stands his ground as he should and staggers back to town with these people he is starting to consider family.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He is so </span>
  <em>
    <span>desperately</span>
  </em>
  <span> tired of the games of men when he watches Aloysius, unable to be turned from his quest for justice. He prays for Clayton’s soul and wonders how it will feel to once again watch over a graveyard with a friend inside.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Matthew takes Clayton’s body to the church.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. V. the art of those left over</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><em>superstitiosi,</em> lit. those who are "left over", i.e. "survivors", "descendants"<br/><em>superstition,</em> a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Before she is Miriam Landisman, she is a vessel that holds only possibilities. But of course, once you give a thing a name, it settles fairly quickly into being what it ought.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When she is young, her mother calls her </span>
  <em>
    <span>a stóirín</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>seabhac beag</span>
  </em>
  <span> and her Little Gentlewoman, but rarely her name. When she asks, Mother said it’s a habit inherited from </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> mother, just like her red hair. She hasn’t inherited the hair, but she has her mother’s jawline and grey eyes and quick, superstitious nature.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Never throw stones at a robin: if you kill it, you’ll never be rid of the ill luck.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>An itchy nose points to a future fight.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Leave out a small dish of cream and Whatever Lives In The Garden will look on you with favor.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But Chicago is full of Irish families and she begins to notice some differences between hers and the others. Mrs. O’Leary down the lane never bakes a loaf without scoring a cross in it (she doesn’t like it nearly as much as her mother’s, scored once, straight down the middle). Mr. Shannahan nails an iron horseshoe above their door (the Shannahan boys are little beasts and that’s why she never wants to cross the threshold into their home). The Kellys shake salt over their children and plant daisies round their doorstep when one of their children goes missing (she doesn’t know how they can stand it, salt stings stings </span>
  <em>
    <span>stings</span>
  </em>
  <span>).</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Your father won’t truck with much of that nonsense and neither will I,” her mother says. She ignores the way Mother politely turns down Mrs. O’Leary’s loaf and chats with Mrs. Shannahan ‘cross the threshold and has to tear her eyes from the salt grains that sprinkle on the ground, fingers tapping an irritated rhythm in her skirts.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>So she decides that this mixing of some-held, some-discarded superstition is just the way of a mixed home. She makes sure she finishes all her sweeping during the daylight, eats a spoonful of curd and sugar before heading out, and wonders if her superstitions will be tangled like cords for the rest of her life.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Fivel Landisman is not at all what she expects of a husband, but they’re in love and her parents approve, so what else is there to do? If America is supposed to be a great melting pot, then she will show it how fluid she can become. When she receives momentous news, good or bad, she spits three times. If she drifts past an open book, she thoughtlessly slides it closed. Everytime she and her husband embark on a journey, they each slide a straight pin under their shirt collars.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And travel they do. Fivel calls her </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tzutzik</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Liebling</span>
  </em>
  <span>, rarely Miriam, and she had learned bargaining and bartering at her mother’s knee; no one had beaten Mother when it came time to spring the trap of a negotiation. And so no one beats her. The Landismans are household names when it comes to those looking to get anything under the sun. All you have to do is put in a request and state what you’re willing to give over. Mrs. Landisman will produce anything you can think to ask for, almost like magic.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Fivel runs the business side, but she counts every dollar and coin as it’s given to her. Just good business sense, of course.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>As they drift, she picks up new accents, new mannerisms, new superstitions like putting on a different dress and hat. Whatever her new clients need to feel at ease, she slides around until she fits the proper mold. In Milwaukee, she never toasts with water. In New Mexico, she chases black moths from the house with the same fervor as the local women. All the way in California, among the miners and the railroad workers, she learns to sell her bulk goods in bundles of eight, never four. Each new rule slides into her mind like it was already there to begin with, and when she can’t sleep at night, she runs over and over the customs like steps to a dance.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They try for a child, but something… something doesn’t click, doesn’t fall into place like it should. She visits every wayward healer and witch and hoodoo woman she can find. Some try their hand at a remedy. Some slide their eyes sideways from her and usher her as politely as they can from their shops. She pretends it isn’t about the way her silver eyes shine a little too bright when she has a goal fastened between her teeth.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>(Fivel tells her that her eyes shine like a wolf’s and her fingers look longer than they should and her hair flutters in a breeze that isn’t there whenever her bleeding starts for another month. Then he kisses her without fear and tells her they’ll try again.)</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But in the end, all of the luck-turning in the world isn’t enough to shelter her. She can’t hold her husband’s hand when he asks her for a clean death. Fire is all wrong, it’s forbidden, but Fivel </span>
  <em>
    <span>asked-</span>
  </em>
  <span> She will return him to the earth however she has to. She will </span>
  <em>
    <span>make</span>
  </em>
  <span> herself have that power.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t know all the right words and gestures. This is so much deeper than a superstition, but her heart calls out for something to feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>right</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so she sits for seven days, plants her hands in the dirt, and keens her grief. She pours her heart and soul into the land where her husband’s ashes sit and despite herself, she’s startled when she looks up to see a silver birch towering exactly where there ought not be one.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It is with dry eyes and a heavy heart that she turns north, and continues to their original destination.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In Deadwood, she introduces herself as Mrs. Miriam Landisman and smiles somewhat sadly when she realizes that that name has no pull over her. No one here knows to call her </span>
  <em>
    <span>a stóirín</span>
  </em>
  <span> or </span>
  <em>
    <span>seabhac beag</span>
  </em>
  <span>, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tzutzik</span>
  </em>
  <span> or </span>
  <em>
    <span>Liebling</span>
  </em>
  <span>. So she slides into the skin of a southern business woman and when the first person asks her where her husband is, she thinks of the silver birch, but her mouth says, “Cheyenne. He sent me on ahead to get the lay of the land.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She’s adrift, working on bargains and deals because she doesn’t know what else to do and that, at least, still feels right. She’s been making bargains since she could talk and wrap the neighborhood children around her finger. Still, when Al Swearengen calls her to his office, she jumps at the chance to be pointed in a direction. She tells the others what to call her and is given their names in return, but only two of them settle into her mind like they’re supposed to, like they fit the ones they’re given. Arabella is easy to figure out: newly married, with a last name and a husband that fit like pieces from the wrong puzzle. Clayton, however… Sharpe may be a name, but it’s not his Name. She’s too burnt out on grief to shy from the memory of old tales whispered in the neighborhood; she knows why she Knows, has known it since she saw her mother stop to count every grain of spilled rice from a split bag in the kitchen.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Still, Names or no, she has four new companions and something to sink her teeth into. She wonders if her hair blows in a wind that isn’t there and tries to keep it pinned up and her hands out of sight when any big revelations happen.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>And big revelations are scattered throughout their travels. When the devil snakes emerge from the pit, she wishes for the first and last time of her life that she had the strength to cross herself. As it is, they cut and run when things heat up and then she’s falling. Awakening from unsettling dreams, she can’t help the suspicious question when she notices Arabella’s use of the old ways. If she gets any deeper into warding away spirits, the woman might start pulling out things like rowan or St. John’s Wort, which might get a touch awkward.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They all shared the same vision, which means something real is trying to reach for them and take away more than its due. Armed with her new knowledge of what they’re dealing with, she is more annoyed than frightened. Give over her </span>
  <em>
    <span>soul</span>
  </em>
  <span>? She doesn’t think so: she knows a bad bargain when she sees one. When they get back to town and the “dealer” opens a floodgate in their veins, she doesn’t feel any different.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She opened her own floodgates where a solitary silver birch stands in the Black Hills.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Then they see that the gunfire in the streets is coming from men who should be below ground and she revolts to her </span>
  <em>
    <span>core</span>
  </em>
  <span>. That’s a bargain no one should make, and an unnatural life not bought and paid for. This needs to be undone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Still, she hasn’t blistered her fingers on iron bullets for nothing and she trusts solid, man-made crafts over magic against magic any day. If she throws her own power in the mix, she shudders to think what could go wrong.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The dead hit the dust, where they’re supposed to stay, and she goes back to her hotel room. Before she sleeps, she ties red wool around her left wrist with seven knots, thinks of her husband, and cries.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Everything she grew up with meant to ward off evil would ward off </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span>, as much as warm, red blood flows through her veins, so she borrows as many superstitions as she can, knocking on wood and stringing together lemons and chilis to hang outside her hotel room.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The others call her “Miriam” and she finds her head turning faster towards the sound that means </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She wonders if she will let it settle around her until it binds her. Looking at the four around her, she thinks she might.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The graves are empty. Farnum is full of ash. The others throw around their new powers like they’ve never heard of a bargain with consequences. Arabella hears a voice calling them back to the mine where it all began when she touches her twice-dead sister. She can feel that her fingers are too long and her eyes are too bright and her teeth are too sharp. She doesn’t need a mirror to know her hair is blowing in a wind that shouldn’t be there. They ride for the pit and she hands Aloysius the nitro.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Freely given,” slips out of her mouth. “I can’t throw worth a damn anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Afterwards, she will wish she didn’t cast aside a debt for the sake of friendship.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Whatever Doc Cochran turns into puts a fire in her blood and she battles with the fierce determination of protecting what is Hers. As much Hers as these four can be, when she only knows the Names of two, anyway.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Returning to the Gem feels like a victory, bedraggled and tired as they are. She counts every piece of gold in the bag until her fingers feel like they can be still, and then she heads down to the bar with three of her companions to wait for the fourth.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Aloysius calls Clayton “Amos Kinsley” and holds a gun to his head and she thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>how dare you. How dare you take him when he is finally Mine</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>But a duel has its own laws and rules, and the more of herself she recognizes, the more she is bound by them. She envisions it, thinks of picking up a bottle and smashing Aloysius over the head with it until he can come to his senses. But her long, long fingers won’t move to pick up the bottle. The challenge has been put forth and met. They will take it outside whether she likes it or not.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>In the end, she wishes Clayton weren’t so damn honorable. She isn’t ready to say goodbye to another. But all duels must come to their natural close, so Clayton is lying in the dust and Mr. Fogg is walking away. The Reverend gathers the two women into his arms for a prayer that she can’t echo.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Miriam Landisman closes her eyes, lets the tears fall, and becomes herself.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is probably my favorite chapter, so I really did save the best for last.</p>
<p>I did a lot of research for the superstitions in Miriam’s chapter, but anyone who is Irish, Indian, Jewish, German, Mexican, or Chinese can feel free to correct me if I got any of it wrong, since I can only gain so much context and understanding from the Internet. I did consult a Jewish friend on the Jewish superstitions I used, but I’m always up for more input. Also, I myself am Irish-American, so I feel pretty confident with the cultural touchstones, but I don’t speak Irish, so let me know if Google Translate did a good job. XD</p>
<p>From Wikipedia: “In Celtic cultures, the birch symbolises growth, renewal, stability, initiation, and adaptability because it is highly adaptive and able to sustain harsh conditions with casual indifference. Proof of this adaptability is seen in its easy and eager ability to repopulate areas damaged by forest fires or clearings. Birches are also associated with the <em>Tír na nÓg,</em> the land of the dead and the <em>Sidhe,</em> in Gaelic folklore, and as such frequently appear in Scottish, Irish, and English folksongs and ballads <b>in association with death, or fairies, or returning from the grave.”</b></p>
<p>a stóirín: Irish, my treasure<br/>seabhac beag: Irish, little hawk<br/>tzutzik: Yiddish, someone ambitious/energetic<br/>liebling: Yiddish, darling</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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